Volunteers in Portsmouth pack food for students in Haiti

PORTSMOUTH — Jim Willey, who has been going to Haiti since 2005 to help arrange deliveries of food, says the statistics there stunned him.

There was not only an 80 percent unemployment problem, but 40 percent of the people were illiterate and 40 percent of the population is 14 years or younger.

When the earthquake hit in 2010, he started Help for Haiti in June.

"I decided to take it up a notch and do something more," he said.

Help for Haiti focuses on three areas: feeding children in schools, promoting education by paying teachers and improving school building, and promoting companies in Haiti so graduates have employment opportunities.

On Saturday, Willey's dream to feed children in schools finally came true when 550 volunteers met at the Frank Jones Center to package 100,000 meals for Haitian students.

"I'm tremendously encouraged," he said. "We're only in the second year, and we already have teachers getting paid and a school being rebuilt — and now a lunch program."

Around 300 of the volunteers came from churches, including Bethany Church in Greenland, Second Baptist Church in Sanbornton, CenterPoint Church in Concord and First Presbyterian Church in Concord, Mass. The other 200, Willey said, were volunteers from the community.

All volunteers took turns working two-hour shifts packaging rice, dried vegetables, soy and chicken flavoring. The food for packaging, or MobilePacks, is provided by the Feed My Starving Children organization. The 21,000 pounds of food will be shipped to a church school in Marmalade, Haiti, where 130 students will receive a meal every day as part of a lunch program there.

"If they see something they're familiar with they're more likely to try other things and they're a great source of carbohydrates," Ursula Maley, MobilePack Supervisor for Feed My Starving Children, said of the rice in the MobilePacks.

All volunteers were placed into groups of 13 to 21 people, where they formed an assembly line to place the meal into packaging bags.

Cindy Solomon, of Newmarket, came to participate in the food packaging when a friend invited her.

"It's a great opportunity to help people in need, the poor and hungry," she said. "¿ My heart goes out to these people."

Solomon also brought her 13-year-old daughter and her daughter's friend.

"It's important as a mother for her child to see we're not the only ones in the world who need help and not the only ones in the country suffering," she said. "It's important for them to see what's happening around the world."

Jim Rolston, of Greenland, a member of Bethany Church, said he came to the food packaging after he heard about it in church.

"In my opinion, this is what life is all about," he said. "You've got to make the world better than what it was like when you were coming in."

The realization of the importance of that food was made even clearer when his wife told him a startling fact that morning.

She told me "that Americans consume $23 billion worth of ice cream every year," he said. "That's enough to feed all the hungry people in the world for an entire year. She said she would never be able to enjoy an ice cream again."

Nancy McKinney, of Hampton, is also a member of Bethany Church.

"I have a real desire for helping the poor and every opportunity I can fulfill that desire and take advantage of that," she said of her involvement Saturday. "When I think about people and children dying of malnutrition every day in this world and the abundance we have and waste it brings tears to my eyes."

Eventually Willey would like to expand and do packaging in other regions such as Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island.

"As a Christ follower it's what we are all called to do," he said. "In my opinion, every church should be doing things like this. The bible says to take care of the poor and widows. A little kid in Haiti don't care about the politics or who's president. He just wakes up hungry."

The cost to complete and ship a meal is 34 cents. For 100,000 packages, $34,000 is needed. To donate, visit www.helpforhaiti.org or send a donation to Help for Haiti P.O. Box 103 Rye, NH 03870.

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